The pleasures we choose is a multifaceted collaboration by artists Pia Lindman, Vidha Saumya, Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen, curators Yvonne Billimore and Jussi Koitela, and architectural designer Kaisa Sööt. Commissioned and produced by Frame Contemporary Art Finland, it premieres at the Pavilion of Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Blurring the boundaries between art, architecture, and social commentary, the Pavilion of Finland brings together three artists for whom art, life, and activism are intertwined. Embraced as a collective project, The pleasures we choose evolved through the exchange of shared and individual experiences to create areas of diverse ‘occupancies’ where visitors are encouraged to reassess and (re)consider societal expectations.
Lindman, Saumya and Wallinheimo-Heimonen’s practices are acutely informed by their embodied experiences of structural, environmental and social imbalances. Articulated through a wide range of materials and processes – including drawing, needlework, sculpture and healing – their works celebrate the pleasure of the personal as a powerful means of reimagining the world as we know it.
Following mercury poisoning, artist and healer Pia Lindman experiences heightened sensitivity of the nervous system and awareness of the micro-signals within her body. She translates these signals into visual images, melodies, words, and colours and incorporates them into artworks that enable her to explore the nuances of different environments and social situations.
Often engaging with the intricate relationship between human presence and the environment, Vidha Saumya’s work challenges the norms of aesthetics, gender, academia and nation-state. In her work, viewers encounter an interplay of desire, intimacy, and (home)land, offset by the heteronormative demands of utility, time and (dis)placement.
Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen’s artwork brings to light the variety of forms of discrimination and violence that people with disabilities are subjected to. Her intricately fabricated realities celebrate a world in which a diversity of human bodies have won the right to choose a pleasurable life over mere existence.
“The pleasures we choose refuses the exceptionalism of art and the myth that the artist is separate from the world, on the contrary it is precisely the experiences that draw attention to co-existence—getting in line, taking to the streets, receiving medical care, breathing the same toxic air— that drive us towards drawing new collective futurities into existence. ”, explain the curators Yvonne Billimore and Jussi Koitela.
Presented in Finland’s Aalto Pavilion, the artists’ works are connected conceptually and materially through architectural interventions designed by Kaisa Sööt. Reimagining the pavilion and the kind of art, bodies and experiences it can support, the exhibition introduces “access architecture” which considers access and bodily needs across registers whilst encouraging multi-sensorial experiences.
“The artists’ and curators’ collaborative and joyful process has been wonderful to witness”, says Raija Koli, Director of Frame and commissioner of the exhibition. “We’re happy to share this meaningful project with the audience in the upcoming exhibition.”
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication published by K. Verlag.
(1) Pia Lindman, animation still from Embodied Wefts, 2024. High-resolution animation, 4h 4min. Courtesy the artist. (2) Vidha Saumya, To all the barricades… the rumour got you (detail from drawing), 2024. Ballpoint pen on silk, 1023 x 300 cm. Photographed by Commercial Art Engravers Pvt. Ltd. Courtesy the artist. (3) Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen, How Great is Your darkness, 2024, still from 2-channel video installation, 5min 22sec. Image: Rasoul Khorram. Courtesy the artist.
Artists
Pia Lindman explores the world of the subsensorial. After being poisoned by Mercury, her nervous system became sensitized to micro-signals from within her body. These signals she transforms into images, melodies, words, and colors, allowing her to tune into atmospheres, toxicities and materiality in different spatial and social conditions. She has exhibited at the 32nd São Paulo Biennial, MoMA, MoMA PS1 and HKW in Berlin and was a fellow at Center for Advanced Visual Studies, MIT (2004–2007).
Vidha Saumya’s practice weaves together notions of exile and utopia, questioning the normatives of aesthetics and socio-political ecologies. Through acrid humour, haptic textures, and arduous workwomanship, her poems, drawings, photographs, videos, books, embroidery, sculptures, culinary interventions, and digital artefacts are at once accessible and intensely challenging. She is co-founder and co-editor of NO NIIN Magazine and a founding member of Museum of Impossible Forms.
Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen is a multidisciplinary artist and disability activist whose work spans sculpture, video, performance and activism within disability politics and policy. Her works deal with structural violence and discrimination framed as kindness, and issues related to women with disabilities. Wallinheimo-Heimonen has facilitated social art workshops and participated in exhibitions in Finland and abroad. She received the Finnish State Prize for Multidisciplinary Art in 2019.
Curators
Yvonne Billimore’s interdisciplinary practice facilitates situations for collective learning, exchange and experiences with particular attention to the intersections of feminist and ecological practices.
Jussi Koitela is Head of Programme at Frame and an independent curator. His curatorial work intertwines art, embodied research methods, urban spatial contexts, collaboration, hospitality and materiality in various forms of exhibitions and knowledge production.
Together they co-curated Rehearsing Hospitalities, Frame’s public programme from 2019 to 2023.
Exhibition Designer
Kaisa Sööt is a Tallinn-based practitioner, focussing on furniture and exhibition design. She studied fine arts at Gerrit Rietveld Academy (BA), carpentry at Tallinn Construction School and interior architecture at Estonian Academy of Arts (MA). She has made exhibition designs for various museums and galleries, such as the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM), Estonian Art Museum (KUMU), Tartu Art Museum, Pori Art Museum and Konsthall C in Stockholm. She has also designed and built furniture for community schools in Brazil, Tallinn Art Hall museum shop, NART community garden in Narva, and designed public playgrounds in Tallinn. Recently she has designed and been operating a public sauna Logi in Tallinn together with colleagues.
Commissioner
The exhibition in the Pavilion of Finland is commissioned and produced by Frame Contemporary Art Finland. Frame, an advocate for Finnish contemporary art, supports international initiatives, facilitates professional partnerships, and encourages critical development of the field through grants, visitor programme and residencies, seminars and talks, exhibition collaborations and network platforms.
Supporters
The main supporter of The pleasures we choose is the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland. Other supporters include the Kone Foundation, The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland, AVEK The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture, The Church Media Foundation, Finnish Federation of the Visually Impaired and the Embassy of Finland in Rome.
The artists’ work has been supported by The Kone Foundation, The Alfred Kordelin Foundation and The Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.
Exhibition Details
Pavilion of Finland at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia.
Address: Pavilion of Finland, Giardini di Castello 30122
Exhibition dates: 20 April – 24 November 2024
Press preview days: 17–18–19 April 2024
For information and requests for interviews:
International press:
Yaz Ozkan and Phoebe Heins at Pelham Communications
yaz@pelhamcommunications.com or phoebe@pelhamcommunications.com
+44 20 8969 3959
Finnish press:
Rosa Kuosmanen, Head of Communications at Frame
rosa.kuosmanen@frame-finland.fi
+358 50 465 3462